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So far Indian rupee is performing very well. As of now, rupee has been in the range of 44.68 against dollar. It is a four month high for the rupee itself. This is happening because of the context of higher crude prices. This is bit unusual, but export performance has been very good.Fourth quarter is usually a good quarter for the rupee as there are a lot of dollar flows in the businesses and markets. Conventionally, exporters and people who have raised loans abroad bring back their money in Q4 period. It’s a common phenomenon to see a lot of dollar flows coming in March.Anant Narayan, MD-Regional head of fixed Income & Currency Trading (South Asia) at Standard Chartered Bank, in an interview he gave his views on the phenomenon of strengthening rupee with a lot of dollar flows and whether it will extend beyond March 31. Rupee will reach 46 mark by May 2011, Narayan added.

India’s one of the Airlines Air India has been asked to repay their oil dues Rs 2400 cr on or before March 29. A Committee of Secretaries headed by the Cabinet Secretary, Mr K.M. Chandrasekhar, decided to defer the March 29 deadline by another month, at a meeting held on Saturday. Now, the cash-strapped national carrier pays Rs 13.5 cr a day for the jet fuel it buys from the oil companies. But as a result of the rising crude oil prices, oil marketing companies have asked for a hike of Rs 5 cr a day, taking the cost up to Rs 18.5 cr a day. Air India Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Arvind Jadhav, who made a presentation at the meeting, made a case for getting discounts for paying cash upfront. The Committee of Secretaries is understood to have asked the oil companies to work out financial impact of such a discount. They have also discussed the issue of payment of dues of about Rs 450 cr by arms of the Government to Air India. The Civil Aviation Secretary, Mr Nasim Zaidi, Air India Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Arvind Jadhav, and officials from the Ministries of Petroleum, Defence and External Affairs were also present at the meeting. Air India has a debt burden of Rs 40,000 cr. It has incurred a cumulative loss of over Rs 13,326.86 cr, since its merger with Indian Airlines in 2007, at the close of financial year 2009-2010.

Sensex has been raised by 465, the same kind of rise happened before July 2009. A normal optimized state across Asian markets on Friday helped Indian equity indices register significant gains. The upward rally, led by information technology (IT), banking and infrastructure sectors, took the NSE Nifty above the mark of 5,600.The BSE Sensex was up by 5.2% i.e 934 points, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), started buying large number of front-line stocks after the recent correction. FIIs were net buyers of Rs 1,446 cr on Friday. They have bought Indian shares worth over Rs 2,000 cr this month.The Sensex gained 464.90 points, or 2.53%, and closed at 18,815.64. More than 1,700 stocks gained and 1,199 fell. The Nifty closed the day at 5,654.25, up 131.85 points, or 2.39 %. Elsewhere in Asia, Hang Seng gained 243 points (1.06%), while the Shanghai Composite and Nikkei rose more than 1% each.The gains were led by the IT companies such as Accenture, Oracle and Infosys. The BSE IT index was the best performer of the day, gaining over four per cent, or 245 points. Infosys Technologies rose 5.23% to Rs 3,162.TCS and Wipro gained 2.26% and 3.68%, respectively. Banks were also in the limelight with State Bank of India gaining 2.18% to Rs 2,709.45.

India’s one of the largest nationalized bank State Bank of India (SBI) on Friday said that they are planning to raise about Rs 4,500 cr through bonds from overseas market next fiscal to fund growth plans. “There will an issue overseas in the next financial year. It could be around 1 billion $,” SBI Chairman O.P. Bhatt said in the Skoch event.This fund would be raised in one overseas issue and the complete numbers or quantum would be finalized during appropriate time depending upon market condition. When the question has been raised regarding about interest rates, he said, that will remains same during the current fiscal. Unless there is significant growth in credit demand, lending rate is unlikely to rise in the next few months, Bhatt added. All the banks to raise interest rates following a 25 basis points hike in short-term lending (repo) and borrowing (reverse repo) rates announced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) at its mid-quarterly review on March 17, 2011.Last month, SBI rose lending and deposit rates on select maturities by 25 basis points in response to a similar rate hike announced by the RBI in January. SBI had revised the base rate or the minimum lending rate by 25 basis points to 8.25%. Similarly, Benchmark Prime Lending Rate (BPLR) for the existing customers was also increased by 25 basis points to 13%.In addition; the bank also increased fixed deposit rates on two select maturities by 25 basis points. Both 555 days and 1,000 days fixed deposits were increased to 9.25% from 9%.